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Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

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Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#51

I did project with Webkit that renders to the terminal: https://github.com/callesg/termkit

Waat! We need to talk - I'm taking a very similar approach in my rewrite. There are some very interesting algorithm problems. Eg; I'm actually comparing pixels in 2 screenshots --with and without text rendered--, in order to get text colour and visibility. This way is actually more performant than using `getElementAt(x, y)` and `getComputedStyle(element)`.

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#53
post #40

Author here. Surprised to see this here as I've been literally spending the last 2 weeks on a complete rewrite from scratch that actually layers REAL text over the blocks. You can get an idea of my approach with this function: https://github.com/tombh/texttop/blob/webext-rewrite/webext/... After the success of hitting the front page here last year, I really wanted to sit down and do this properly. So not only am I wo…

Fun project, I dreamed of this so many times. Happy to see it running

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#57
post #40

Author here. Surprised to see this here as I've been literally spending the last 2 weeks on a complete rewrite from scratch that actually layers REAL text over the blocks. You can get an idea of my approach with this function: https://github.com/tombh/texttop/blob/webext-rewrite/webext/... After the success of hitting the front page here last year, I really wanted to sit down and do this properly. So not only am I wo…

You might get a slightly better resolution with the approach taken here: https://github.com/stefanhaustein/TerminalImageViewer (= find best matching block graphics character for most prominent colors in a cell; there is a comparison to half blocks at the end).

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#58
post #54

For more detail, there's sixels, see https://github.com/saitoha/libsixel

I did look into that, but it's not as widely supported as the UTF8 half-block.

With many bytes necessary to print just six pixels, it wouldn't be as low-bandwidth, right?

On the other hand, how about libcaca? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libcaca

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#59
post #38

Given the quality of text (or the requirement to zoom) I'm not sure what the fuss is about. It looks abysmal, and having to zoom all the time is a habit I am glad we got rid of due to higher resolutions. Though still existing on mobile devices it is also user-friendlier to zoom there, and the reason for the feature is the device is more mobile. You could already run a browser in a framebuffer for ages. Which means yo…

I can't speak for the alternatives you suggest, but I feel you're being overly unfair on this project. Even if it wasn't at all practical, it's still an interesting demonstration of the approach. Plus, it sounds like the author finds it useful, and I'm sure there are relevant use-cases. Maybe you could explain the "run a browser in a framebuffer" technique for those of us unfamiliar with it. Zooming (not panning) is…

I'm just expressing how I don't see it useful (I'm curious to hear use cases though). That doesn't mean I want nobody in the world to find it useful. That's up to each and every one of us. Heck, perhaps it can be improved, who knows.

These projects I mentioned have already (partly) tackled the latency issues. RDP and NX suffers far less from latency issues than X11 and VNC.

As for framebuffer, see [1] [2] for examples. Although now that I'm looking into it perhaps my friend was using Links2 and not a Mozilla offspring. I remember he also used lynx/w3m/dillo. As you can see from the example, one could just run MPlayer locally back in those days, with a framebuffer on a local tty. Apparently YouTube works as well [3]. DirectFB links seem dead though, and it seems MPlayer website is also down [4].

Zooming appears a natural motion on mobile devices because it allows one to see more content which is hidden due to physical reasons (a trade-off). Do you really find that useful on todays large monitors? Laptops even? Instead, it appears that for desktop devices scrolling provides adequate user experience. Zooming was added ages ago in Xorg, allowing a compositing window manager to utilise. Has it been used a lot besides the obvious accessibility feature? The only reason it is usable in this specific use case is the low amount of pixels (low pixel density). But I am curious to all these use cases you got in mind for zooming.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectFB

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_framebuffer

[3] https://github.com/notro/fbtft/wiki/Framebuffer-use

[4] https://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/fbdev.html

Re: Texttop – An interactive X Linux desktop rendered in TTY and streamable over SSH

#60
post #40

Author here. Surprised to see this here as I've been literally spending the last 2 weeks on a complete rewrite from scratch that actually layers REAL text over the blocks. You can get an idea of my approach with this function: https://github.com/tombh/texttop/blob/webext-rewrite/webext/... After the success of hitting the front page here last year, I really wanted to sit down and do this properly. So not only am I wo…

It's going to be a single cross-platform, static, Go binary, that launches your preferred browser in the background.

This is where go really shines in my opinion (generics or not :P). Cross platform just works; I was stunned when I installed go on windows and was able to build third party libs, and build and run exe's on windows.

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